User:Ravenswing/RfA review

Welcome to the Question phase of RfA Review. We hope you'll take the time to respond to your questions in order to give us further understanding of what you think of the RfA process. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here. Also, feel free to answer as many questions as you like. Don't feel you have to tackle everything if you don't want to.

In a departure from the normal support and oppose responses, this review will focus on your thoughts, opinions and concerns. Where possible, you are encouraged to provide examples, references, diffs and so on in order to support your viewpoint. Please note that at this point we are not asking you to recommend possible remedies or solutions for any problems you describe, as that will come later in the review.

If you prefer, you can submit your responses anonymously by emailing them to gazimoff (at) o2.co.uk. Anonymous responses will be posted as subpages and linked to from the responses section, but will have the contributor's details removed. If you have any questions, please use the talk page.

Once you've provided your responses, please encourage other editors to take part in the review. More responses will improve the quality of research, as well as increasing the likelihood of producing meaningful results.

Once again, thank you for taking part!

Questions[edit]

When thinking about the adminship process, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
I have never invited someone to stand as a candidate, and probably never will; see below.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
On either level, I can't imagine why this is a bad idea. In all walks of life, inexperienced people are trained to do jobs by those experienced in the task. Coaching instructs prospective admins in how to do the job and how to manage the PR aspects of the job. What's wrong with that?

What IS wrong is how it's done. There are all manner of problems cropping up because people have been coached to hit particular hot buttons to buff up their resumes, leading to unthinking AfD nominations, XfDs of new articles within minutes of creation, and other stunts to buff up edit counts. Removing the dog and pony show that is now RfA would change the need for insufficiently trained candidates with no experience in these areas to barge in bellowing.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
I'm neutral on co-noms, except when they are admins; even supposing that admins form some manner of cabal - and I am not remotely that paranoid - one would think they wouldn't nominate suspect candidates, even among their friends, for fear of looking bad. That aside, the notion that self-noms involve "power hunger" as some would have it is total and arrant bullshit. I am far more leery of false modesty for public consumption than I am of people who think they can do a tough job and want the chance to do so.
Advertising and canvassing
Frankly, I'd like someone to explain to me why it's verboten to canvass FOR a candidate, but quite acceptable to canvass against one. Advertising the same ... let me get this straight, it's okay for people who don't know the editor at all to vote Support/Oppose based on a ten second superficial review of his or her record, but it's "advertising" to solicit the opinions of Wikiprojects and/or editors in areas where the candidates are familiar and the locals know far more about the candidates' abilities and style? Come again?
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
The standard questions are fine. That the so-called "optional questions" are nothing but (I've seen hordes of Opposes on the sole failure to answer one or another of them, let alone all of them) is suspect at best, and given the number of optional questions that seem designed to provoke a response out of the candidate upon which people promptly pounce and declare the candidate "one of THEM!!" is unacceptable. One editor remarked that the current process was akin to hazing, and I agree with him.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
Too often this is knee-jerk. Someone who is (or can be smeared so, anyway) a "deletionist" automatically garners Opposes, and from the same editors. Someone who self-noms automatically draws some of the same Opposes. There are so many hobby horses out there, and so many editors who will, without any thought of the candidate's other qualifications, just write him off for having too few edits, too few edits in the "right" areas, too few talk page comments, too MANY talk page comments, not enough ANI/XfD experience, too MUCH ANI/XfD experience, and so on. I've even seen, outrageously, Opposes because voters spot political positions or affiliations on the candidate's userpages that they don't like, and blatantly admit that those are the reasons to Oppose. The hot buttons de jour change often; for instance, a year ago, no one shot down anyone at RfA for failing to hit a certain percentage of edit summaries. Voters show neither hesitation or shame in Opposing any candidate unfamiliar with a particular Wikipedia area or admin task, even if a candidate pledges openly along the lines of "I'm not really familiar with fair-use image rules, so that's an admin task I'm not going to do." Admitting the same has been the kiss of death for many RfAs.

Beyond which, unique to Wikipedia, this is absolutely a vote, despite many hot demurrals: I've seen no cases where a bureaucrat has said "I don't care that this fellow's only got 70%, most of the Opposes are nonsense, s/he's got the mop," and the instances where a 'crat's promoted with only 75% have provoked firestorms. I know a lot of you don't like this, but seriously: prove me wrong.

For that matter, I just did some legwork. In the last year, 331 candidates have passed RfA. Only 14 passed with less than 80%, and only three with less than 75% - and those three had 73, 89 and 176 Supports respectively. By contrast, not one single candidate who hit 75% and did not withdraw failed to gain nomination.

So ... could someone explain to me again how this is not 100% a pop opinion poll, pure and simple?
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
No comment.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
No comment.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
Errr ... how is it bad to train for a new job?
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
This is likewise BS. There are avenues for dealing with rogue admins. This is just a matter of allowing some hotheads to go headhunting for admins they don't like. I view this as nothing more than a political pressure tactic in RfA. Like elections where political candidates are expected to take "The Pledge" (to blindly support or reject whatever that region's hot topic is), this has devolved into people saying what the listeners want to hear. I realize that people are unhappy over how hard it is to desysop someone, but I'd be more sympathetic if I hadn't seen witchhunts which boiled down to an admin making a decision that a bored hothead with too much time on his hands didn't like.

When thinking about adminship in general, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

How do you view the role of an administrator?
...
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
...

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
Many times. I can't call myself a RfA regular, but I've probably voted in around a hundred RfAs.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes, I have, which crystallized a number of my thoughts above. I withdrew when it became apparent consensus was not going to be reached. Many of the Opposes came from people upset that I had canvassed (at the time, I was unaware of WP:CANVASS), and the rest stemmed from an editor who disagreed with my stance over the use of diacriticals and openly canvassed against me. I can't see putting myself through the wringer again when the best I can expect is an unpaid, volunteer position in which I would do a lot of work and take a lot of grief for it.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
That it is (a) seriously broken as constituted; (b) that the only people who pass the process are those who've carefully never taken a stand, never uttered a cross word and have left no handles for anyone to grasp, and thus robs Wikipedia of many talented, able, passionate would be admins; (c) gives more weight to knee-jerk, thoughtless responses, because after all it only takes five seconds to type "Oppose: He's a deletionist who'll destroy Wikipedia" or "Support: Doesn't strike me as out to get the encyclopedia;" and (d) damages Wikipedia because it deters people from running and has provoked once-able editors to quit in anger over their treatment. RfA needs to be taken out of the community's hands.

Postscript: In reading some of the other comments, I'm struck by the assertion (echoed by others) "It doesn't appear to me that the process itself is broken, only that some of the people who !vote in it are." Er, but the one is inseparable from the other. Yes, I'm sure we'd all love it if the process was patronized only by thoughtful, reasoned voters who took some effort to assess candidates' history and qualifications, but heck, wouldn't we all love it if the only folks who edited Wikipedia were of like mind? It'd put NPP, XfD and ANI out of business in moments. Unlike with vandal fighting, XfD, new pages' patrol and the like, however, there is zero redress at RfA for thoughtless voting. At least at XfD a closing admin can rule for policy against consensus. A closing bureaucrat at RfA never, ever does.

Once you're finished...[edit]

Thank you again for taking part in this review of the Request for Adminship process. Now that you've completed the questionnaire, don't forget to add the following line of code to the bottom of the Response page by clicking this link and copying the following to the BOTTOM of the list.

* [[User:Ravenswing/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

Again, on behalf of the project, thank you for your participation.

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 04:07 on 23 June 2008.